I've finished the pandaria tamers so I have the pandaren spirits and the beasts of fable to do but once thats over how much prep should I do for the celestial tournament? How many level 25s do I need and are there any pets I really need to have leveled and rare to complete it?

I've since modified teams a little here and there, but I worked off of the pets and strats listed in this guide before ever attempting the tournament. I was able to beat it the first time very easily, and have had no troubles since then (unless RNG kicked my butt).

You could certainly go in there with whatever you have on hand and gift it a whirl, but preparing ahead of time makes a world of difference. I've seen quite a few people post on these forums about how hard the tournament is or how it's impossible to beat - but with the right prep and teams it's easy to get through.

Fauxfur wrote:Thank you! Yeah I read up on it and I don't think I could go in it as is, gonna take a look over these guides and prep.

You get three rotating trainers each week to beat and the four celestial pets after that. The four celestial pets never rotated and they only have one pet in each. The trainers have three each, like normal trainers. So you won't see the same trainers you had today for a couple weeks. It all resets on Tuesdays, per usual.

You can't rev or heal your pets between matches either, so having enough pets for 7 teams of 3 is ideal. So 21 pets, basically, at the minimal. When the tourney came out, I'd see which trainers were this weeks trainers and level up whatever pets I thought I'd need for that specific week only. It made it less daunting that way. And once you get the celestial beast teams finished then you just need the nine for each trainer.

Other advice? Hm. Well, start with what you deem to be the hardest of the trainers and the same for the beasts. That way you won't have to do so many over again (yeah, you have to leave the scenario and restart it again if you need to revive and heal your pets.)

My advice would be to build teams for the celestials first since they are the same every week.

Then if you don't plan on hitting it before the reset, go into the tournament and see what tamers are there and then leave. That means one of the other two sets will be there next week. Otherwise if you do plan on hitting the current tamers, take note of those instead.

Either way, start working on leveling pets for the tamers you hope to beat, but definitely work on the celestials first

The celestials are actually the easy part. Two of them go down easily to the traditional Howl/Bomb stray. For Xu-Fu, you can usually solo him with Lil Bling. Just have another mechanical with a nuke on standby, just in case RNG is tough on you. Yula can usually be solo'd by Clock'em, and I carry a Gregarious Grell, just in case he's needed for mop up

*edit: while Clock'em CAN usually solo Yula, I actually use a Stitched Pup first. Howl significantly speeds up the process

It should also be mentioned that even though you can't heal within the Celestial Tournament, you CAN heal inside the fights. Both Yula and Xao open with a first round buff. You can use the round to cast a backline heal, quit the fight, and then repeat. I personally use a Brew Pup, due to his hefty heal, but for those that don't have him, crickets and hoppers will work too.

Here is what I use for the celestial pets if that helps, its fairly generic with plenty of different pets to fit the bill for most.

Yu'la: Clock'em with Jab and Dodge can generally solo her, and its an easy pet to get (just need rank 4 in brawlers guild). Dodge the lift-offs, rest of the time spam jab.

Chi-Chi: Any snails can pretty easily kill him, just keep shell shield up, refreshing it on the turns he does his dodge thing, rest of the time spam ooze touch. High power snails are best. Note you need at least two snails, three is safest.

Zao: Any two pets with explode and any one pet with ion cannon beats him every time. doesn't really even matter what pets they are. What I normally use is netherspace abyssal, mininfernal, and menagerie custodian, but really any pets that have those abilities work. I start with abyssal, meteor strike, immolate, explode, then bring in mininfernal, explode immediately, then bring in custodian and ion cannon immediately and Zao is dead.

The standard val'kyr, water spirit, anything with howl setup works just fine on Xu-fu also (curse of doom, unholy ascension, geyser, whirlpool, howl), but I have always felt that tactic was almost like cheating which is why I always look for alternate ways to handle fights.

It's normally a 5 round kill, but if Xu-fu crits on R1, it becomes a 4 round kill since you die a round earlier with the fox. I keep a second fox on reserve on the offchance he crits in R2 (just restart the fight with a new fox), but have only had to do that once so far in the last 25ish weeks.

If your spider isn't strong enough to kill him on R5, then keep a second spider and on R6 use another spider swarm to finish him off. Dazzling dance should keep them faster than Xu-Fu

In addition to giving you a specific roster of pets, also explains how you can do some healing within the Tournament.

Both with this and the excellent guide mentioned earlier, you need certain pets that aren't easy to get hold of. Or are quite pricey in AH. Both also requires specific pet specs for some of the strategies, like the Alpine Foxling must be S/S.

I've padded my stable with extra pets, and in some cases duplicated the more critical ones like Chrominius and Unborn Val'kyr. Really annoys me when the RNG gods are frowning on me a half hour into the tournament and there's no choice but to abandon quest and start over.